There is known ballistic armor of a kind having a basic, main armor and an additional, auxiliary armor panel in the form of a perforated or slit plate, normally made of steel or other ballistic material, installed at a stand-off distance from the main armor, designed to effectively break an incoming projectile or at least to divert it from its incident trajectory and thus substantially reduce its residual penetration capability through the basic armor.
Examples of armor using at least partially perforated plates are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,014,593, 5,221,807, EP 1,128,154, US2006/0213360 and US2005/0257677.
There are also known armor plates having a layer of cylindrical ceramic pellets with voids therebetween, and IL 115397 discloses the use of one such plate in a multilayer armor panel.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,408,734 discloses the use of an armor plate of the kind disclosed in IL 115397, and suggests filling replacing some of the pellets with elements having protrusions entering voids between adjacent pellets, these elements being made of the same ceramic material as the pellets.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,575,075 discloses an armor plate similar to that disclosed in IL 115397 made a layer of ceramic pellets, each having a channel oriented perpendicularly to the plate's front surface, to reduce the weight of the armor plate.